Sara Pascoe Quotes

You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.

Stand-up comedy is all you. It's your show, it's your game. You control every aspect of it - of that experience and that expression. There's really nothing quite as satisfying.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it's my entity; it's my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

A comedy club is a place where you work out material, you're trying material.

I'm an entertainer, so in whatever form I entertain... The thing about being a rapper is that you have more control over your form, whereas with acting you have to compromise a lot.

I did comedies for 10 years and I learned a great deal.

In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

In Manhattan, I often do two or three or more shows a night, so I'm always working on new material.

To me, one of the things I love about being an actor is that it's never done; it's never perfect, and so it's the process. It's like practicing being okay with things not being perfect and things being outside of your control.

Actors, you have to wait for people to give you work, or you have to make your own stuff. But standup, I could just say, 'I want to do standup in 30 minutes,' and I can go do standup. Or I could just say, 'I want to do standup in a few weeks in this city.'

The best part about stand-up is that you control everything. Period.

Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.

'Cheers' was a good first step because I got to write my own material.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

I still love to walk on stage and make people laugh, and I work very, very hard at it, and I take it seriously.

If I want to be a real comedian, I can't let you dictate my material, so I started creating more new material.

The role of a comedian is to go in and make something funny. That might be a situation where I'm writing, a situation where I'm in control, like standup or something of my own that I'm making, or it might be something like being an actor in someone else's project.